Chuck Hagel is now the departing Secretary of Defense. His rumored resignation is now official and AP notes that the resignation "comes as the president's
national security team has been battered by crises including the rise of
Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria and Russia's provocations in
Ukraine."

This afternoon at the White House, US President Barack Obama and Hagel
announced the Secretary of Defense's resignation. We'll skip Barack's
repeated use of "Chuck" and instead note Hagel's words:

Mr. President, thank you -– thank you for your generous words, for
your friendship, for your support which I have always valued and will
continue to value. And to my not old, but my longtime, dear friend Vice
President Biden, who I have always admired and respected, and both the
President and I have learned an awful lot from the Vice President over
the years -– thank you. And I want to thank the Deputy Secretary of
Defense who is here, Bob Work, and the Chairman and Joint Chiefs of
Staff, General Marty Dempsey, who also is here. I want to thank them for
being here this morning.I also want to thank you both for your tremendous leadership of the
Defense Department and what you mean to our men and women and their
families all over the world; and for the honor I’ve had to serve with
each of you and the privilege it’s been in every way.And I want to thank the entire leadership team at the Pentagon.
Without their support and wise counsel over the last couple of years our
many accomplishments, and the President noted some, I have been part of
that -– but it’s a team. It’s all these tremendous men and women, as
you know Mr. President, that make this happen and I couldn’t be prouder
of them and what we have accomplished over the almost two years that
I’ve had the honor of serving in this position.And as the President noted I have today submitted my resignation as
Secretary of Defense. It’s been the greatest privilege of my life; the
greatest privilege of my life to lead and most important, to serve -- to
serve with the men and women of the Defense Department and support
their families. I am immensely proud of what we’ve accomplished during
this time. We have prepared ourselves, as the President has noted, our
allies and Afghan National Security Forces for a successful transition
in Afghanistan. We bolstered enduring alliances and strengthened
emerging partnerships while successfully responding to crises around the
world.And we’ve launched important reforms that the President noted --
reforms that will prepare this institution for the challenges facing us
in decades to come. I believe we have set not only this department –-
the Department of Defense -– but the nation on the stronger course
toward security, stability and prosperity. If I didn’t believe that, I
would not have done this job.As our country prepares to celebrate Thanksgiving I want to –- you,
Mr. President, and you, Vice President Biden, -– acknowledge what you
have done and how grateful I am to both of you for your leadership and
your friendship and for giving me this opportunity to serve our country
once again.I will continue to support you, Mr. President, and the men and women
who defend this country every day so unselfishly; and their families,
what they do for our country, so unselfishly. And as I have said –- and
as the President noted –- I will stay on this job and work just as hard
as I have over the last couple of years, every day, every moment, until
my successor is confirmed by the United States Senate.I’d also like to express my gratitude to our colleagues on Capitol
Hill -- my gratitude to them for their support of me, but more
importantly their support of our troops and their families and their
continued commitment to our National Security.I also want to thank my international counterparts for their
friendship and their partnership and their advice during my time as
Secretary of Defense. Their involvement with me and their partnership
with me -- in so many of these important areas as we build these
coalitions of common interests as you have noted, Mr. President –- are
so critically important and to them, I am grateful I will be forever
grateful.And finally I’d like to thank my family. My wife Lilibet, who you
have mentioned, Mr. President, who was with me this morning as she has
been with me throughout so many years, and during so many tremendous
experiences. And this experience and opportunity and privilege to serve
as Secretary of Defense has been one of those; and to my daughter Allyn
and my son Ziller.

Mr. President, again, thank you. To you and to all of our team
everywhere, as we know Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, it is a team
effort. And that’s part of the fun of it, to help build teams and to
work together to make things happen for the good of the country and make
a better world. For all of that I am immensely grateful. And to all of
you, your families, happy Thanksgiving. Thank you very much.
The repeated use of "Chuck" in Barack's remarks were most likely an
effort to make shoving Hagel out of a moving car seem far kinder than it
was.

Selena Hill (Latin Post) notes:[. . .] inside sources say that the former Nebraska senator was forced out by the president, CNN
reports. According to officials, the White House lost confidence in
Hagel's ability to effectively lead in the Pentagon. Plus, the former
Republican senator faced pressure as criticism of the president's
national security team on a series of global issues mounted, including
the threat of the Islamic State.

MONTAGNE: Well, get down to why Hagel is resigning right at this moment?LIASSON:
Well, the president had conversations with Hagel in October about the
final quarter of his presidency, and he essentially asked Hagel to step
down. I think the biggest reason was that the mission has changed. When
Chuck Hagel came in, his focus was on drawing down troops in Afghanistan
and Iraq, shrinking the Pentagon, dealing with the sequester budget
cuts. But now the world has changed. We're recommitting troops to Iraq
to fight ISIS. In Afghanistan, we're going to be leaving some more
troops behind. And the White House decided they needed a strategic
thinker. And they've really struggled to stay one step ahead of all of
these crises - Ebola, Ukraine, even conflicts in Asia. And I think the
thinking was that they needed somebody else to run the Defense
Department, more of a strategic thinker, in the remaining months of the
president's term.MONTAGNE: And beyond that, were there problems with Hagel?LIASSON:
Well, Chuck Hagel did occasionally seem not be on the same page as the
White House. He famously said that ISIS was beyond anything we'd seen
before. He was kind of out in front on that. He clashed with the
national security advisor, Susan Rice, on Syria. And he never really
made it into that very small insular inner circle at the White House.

The White House announced
that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had submitted his resignation after
he and President Obama "both determined that it was time for new
leadership at the Pentagon."Time for new leadership? Really?
Hagel's tenure is still being measured in months rather than years (18,
to be exact), he has barely had time to locate all the elevators in the
Pentagon. Yet it is somehow time for new leadership? This announcement
is Washingtonspeak for "the guy we picked isn't working out."

TVNZ One News specifically notes,"Mr Hagel has had his own frustrations with the White House. In recent
weeks, he sent a letter to national security adviser Susan Rice in which
he said Mr Obama needed to articulate a clearer view of the
administration's approach to dealing with Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The letter is said to have angered White House officials."

“This announcement shows when you don’t have a strategy, it’s hard to
come up w/a team to help you implement a strategy,” said GOP Sen. Roy
Blunt of Missouri on Twitter. GOP Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland tweeted,
“Pres Obama’s national security policy is failing & world is in
turmoil. It will take more than changing the Sec of Defense to fix it.”
Similarly, House Speaker John Boehner thanked Hagel for his service but
added, “New #SecDef isn’t enough…” And in an expanded statement, Boehner
said Hagel’s replacement must accompany a “larger re-thinking” of the
America’s military strategy, suggesting GOP lawmakers will take a
tough-as-nails approach during the next confirmation process.

Hagel has agreed to hang on until his successor can be confirmed. That
person will be number four. He or she will follow Robert Gates, Leon
Panetta and Chuck Hagel. Four.

Since January 2009, Barack has required 4 US Ambassadors to Iraq as
well: Chris Hill, James Jeffrey, Robert Steven Beecroft and Stuart
Jones. Four.

When the US could have provided stability, it provided a non-stop state of flux.